Anti-Semitism and Europe

Sept. 21, 2014

Re “Germany’s new hatred” (Opinion, Sept. 17) by Jochen Bittner: European anti-Semitism is an old social code that gives people the possibility of directing their uneasiness with their social situation against certain groups of people defined as “strangers” (or “enemies”) and to harass, persecute and kill them without fear of punishment. For people who feel underprivileged, anti-Semitism is like a drug. The anti-Semitic delusion was exported to Europe’s colonies and to their successor states, and with the immigration of Muslims during the last decades a modified form of anti-Semitism has come back to Europe.

So anti-Semitism with a Christian background got a hostile brother: anti-Semitism with a Muslim background. Christian anti-Semitism has been interpreted as a rebellion against monotheism and its universalistic ethics. Now both adherents of anti-Semitism are united in their hatred of monotheism, represented by its original — Judaism.

The transition of the special form of hatred called anti-Semitism to its generalized form, xenophobia, is a fluid one. Here the example of the German neo-fascist gang N.S.U. (National Socialist Underground) is instructive. One of the leaders of the group has a tattoo on his belly — “Die Jew Die.” But the N.S.U. didn’t kill Jews. They were hunting for a substitute for Jews, people they called “Alis,” Muslim (or Christian) retailers out of Turkey (or Greece) subsumed under a new abstract category of “strangers” created by the N.S.U., whose members were convinced that this gave them a license to kill. This example of a conversion of the anti-Semitic/xenophobic stereotype should be a warning to young Muslims.

The struggle against anti-Semitism and xenophobia is a long-term project. So long as these addictive drugs are seen as a problem only after the most recent manifestation of hatred, there will be no chance to win this battle. Information about anti-Semitism and xenophobia has to find a place in the curriculums of every school and university.

Dr. Helmut Dahmer, Vienna

The writer is a professor of sociology at the Darmstadt University of Technology.

The recent increase of anti-Semitism in Europe, which Mr. Bittner agrees may be the worst since Would War II, is regularly and forcefully denounced by European political leaders, notably in Germany and in France. As Mr. Bittner’s article shows, this new wave of anti-Semitism is also regularly and forcefully denounced by the mainstream European press. It seems, however, that the voices of European Christian and Muslim leaders are not being heard on this issue. They should be denouncing anti-Semitism in the same clear and forceful manner.